Thanks to the efforts of the Association of the Hardwood Tree, Chaffee Crossing may become the home of the Hardwood Tree Museum, a place where Fort Smith’s golden days of manufacturing with wood will be documented and honored.

But an exhibit of wood from an even earlier time already is on display, courtesy of the museum-to-be, at the Janet Huckabee Arkansas River Valley Nature Center. Pieces of petrified tree trunks and limbs were found during coal mining operations in LeFlore County in the 1990s, according to a Times Record report Monday. The University of Arkansas department of geology identified the specimens as being 300 million years old, according to Bob Worley, who has worked to develop the museum since the Association of the Hardwood Tree was incorporated in 2010.

Plenty of cities throughout the country have reason to esteem the hardwood tree, but Fort Smith is first among them. As the city on the border grew through the latter part of the 19th century and into the 20th, it became known as a manufacturing center thanks to the abundance of natural resources nearby and its easy access to the transportation made possible by the Arkansas River.

“Fort Smith, being located on a navigable waterway and on the border of Indian Territory, developed by the early 20th century into the manufacturing center of the Southwest with 100 manufacturers producing a great variety of wood products, from railroad ties, brooms, barrels and caskets to furniture of every description and vehicles of many types, including steamboats,” Bob Worley told the Times Record last week, adding that wheelbarrows, folding beds, wooden training rifles and split rail fences also were produced in the area.

It was furniture that came to be king in the area, and furniture manufacturers led by Ed Ballman were instrumental in the establishment of National Forest protections in the Ouachita and Ozark forests, Mr. Worley said.

It is not surprising then, that the Hardwood Tree Museum will tell a story of manufacturing and of conservation.

“We can no longer afford to take our forest for granted,” said Billy Higgins, history professor at the University of Arkansas at Fort Smith and Hardwood Tree association member. “They were so vast, and we were so few.”

Now of course we are so many, and forests are so vulnerable. And without conservation of hardwood sources, there can be no beautiful works from wood.

Those who would like to be involved in the work of the Hardwood Tree association may contact Mr. Worley at 782-4220, Mr. Higgins at 788-7588 or James Reddick, Fort Smith architect and association member, at 782-4085.

The association is looking for volunteers to help with research, transcribe interviews and organize information. Association members also would like to talk to people who worked in wood-based industries or wood processing, including sawmills, in the area. Eventually, organizers will be looking for money to make the museum a reality, but today, the search for information — and perhaps some artifacts — continues.

Fort Smith always has room for one more museum, especially one devoted to something so central in our history as our furniture industry and the trees that supplied it.